It’s been nine years since we’ve heard an album from Grinderman, the Bad Seeds side project by Nick Cave and frequent collaborators Warren Ellis, Martyn P. Casey and Jim Scalvunos. The most recent performance from the band – who split up in 2011 – was back in 2013, when they briefly reunited to perform at Coachella.
But now, a comment by Cave on his Red Hand Files site – where he responds to questions from fans – has hinted that another album is likely on the way.
In a post regarding his favourite guitarists and feeling pride, Cave discussed Robert Fripp of progressive rock legends King Crimson. Cave shared a story about Fripp contributing to an extended version of Grinderman 2 cut ‘Heathen Child’, saying that the track was “Grinderman at their very best” and adding that recording with Fripp remained “one of the most seismic events” in Cave’s life.
In the post, Cave referred to 2010’s Grinderman 2 as part of a “yet to be completed trilogy” in the response, suggesting we could very well be hearing a third album from the group sometime in the future.
It’s not the first time Cave has hinted at reforming the project. Last year, a fan asked the singer whether he had plans to “rock out again a la Grinderman.”
Cave responded to the question, explaining that he’d recently sat down with Ellis and discussed the idea.
“We both thought the world needed Grinderman, considering its current emotional climate,” said Cave.
“We both thought that Grinderman appeared to be a lot more popular now than when it existed, and we wondered whether that was simply the band passing into folklore, or whether the world had become, in the last years, more puritanical, less playful, and more hypersensitive, and that there were a lot of people out there, like you Marvin, who just wanted to listen to a band that fucked things up a bit.”
Listen to the aforementioned ‘Super Heathen Child’ – featuring a killer solo courtesy of Fripp – below.
